


The Captain's Mascot

by BananaCracker333 (bananacracker333)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Spoilers, Spoilers for the genocide run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 17:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5751295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananacracker333/pseuds/BananaCracker333
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sans and Undyne have a chat because pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Captain's Mascot

**Author's Note:**

> I've finally fixed all the problems with the formatting. For the third and hopefully final time. Anyway, I've added a bit at the end as of the end of May, 2016. So that's a thing. Just some finishing touches, changed a few things, fun stuff like that. Enjoy.

_Hello, friend! You’ve, err, almost reached the Great Papyrus! I’m probably doing something very important and Royal Guard-like right now, so leave a message after the tone!_

“Dammit!” The curse slipped out her mouth without a second thought. “Papyrus this is important. You’re never late for training. Now you better not have taken a page out of Sans’ book, otherwise I will be forced to make you run laps around Hotland. Now I am going to come over there, and you are going to come with me to training, got that, nerd?” She shut her phone, nearly smashing it in the process. She jumped down to the road, quickly making her way towards Snowdin, mumbling the whole way. If she were to be honest, she would say that she was incredibly worried. The only times that Papyrus ever missed a minute of training was if something was wrong with sans. Even then he would answer his phone. Or call. He’s never just blown off training like this, and Undyne was concerned. Very concerned. Fighting the urge to smash something concerned. But, for now, she needed to check on the nerd brothers.

When she finally arrived in Snowdin, everything was empty. She checked the library, the inn, the shop, there was nothing. She checked sans’ post and Papyrus’ puzzles, none of them were solved, however, there was a mess of footprints surrounding them. Undyne was screaming for her friend now, for the guards, anyone. She’d even gladly find sans slacking at this point, and made sure to add that into her panicked calls. Suddenly, on her way to check the skeletons’ house, she realized that her footsteps weren’t crunching anymore. She looked down in horror to find that the pure white snow she had been traversing had turned into a messy grey sludge. Undyne knelt down, and that’s when she saw it. To her left, almost completely covered in snow, was Lesser Dog’s armor, followed by a set of small footprints. She backpedaled with a growl, breaking into a sprint towards her trainee’s house, hoping that Papyrus had been smart enough to let whoever did this go into waterfall to be dealt with by her, but there was a small voice in her head that told her that wasn’t how it would go down.

Despite her urgency up until this point, she paused in front of the brothers’ door, fist raised to knock. Something told her she didn’t want to know what was on the other side of that door. However, as soon as she heard a muffled noise, she knocked. Apparently the door was open, because it swung on its hinges as soon as it was touched. She crept into the dark house, everything seeming grey. The television flickered, apparently on mute, making everything seem blue and almost incorporeal, like it was only halfway real.

“Sans?” She called out gently, somehow, raising her voice felt wrong. Like shouting in a crypt. “Papyrus?” At the sound of the younger brother’s name, she heard a sob coming from one of the upstairs room. Undyne rushed up the stairs and called again, distinctly hearing Sans from the first room. She flung the door open, prepared to either curse or comfort, whichever she deemed Papyrus needed, however, she was not prepared to see sans curled into a ball on top of the bed, clutching something in his hands. “Sans? Where’s your brother?”

“Oh. That’s right. He wouldn’t have been at training, would he.” His voice was unsteady, like he was holding back laughter or tears, and Undyne wasn’t sure which.

“Sans, I need more than that. Where is he?” Undyne was no stranger the eldest brother’s occasional episodes, Papyrus calling in for the morning to help his brother calm down or something. She’s never seen it personally, but if it was upsetting enough for Papyrus to call in, she figured it was rather dramatic. However, what she was seeing was more sad than scary. A stare right through her, seemingly reaching new home itself, that red thing clutched so tightly in his hands, and the wetness around his empty eyes told her more than she wanted to know, but less than she needed to. “Sans, you’ve got to talk to me. What happened? Where did Papyrus go?”

“Papyrus went and left me! No matter. He’ll be back when it all resets, right? He’ll come back so I can watch him die again. And then it will happen again and again and again and rinse and repeat and die and die and die and—“ Sans was just mumbling nonsense at this point, but if what he said could be trusted, Papyrus was dead. But he did seem kind of manic, and Undyne most certainly didn’t want to accept it.

“Sans.” She shook the skeleton by the shoulders as gently as her growing panic would allow until he looked at her, eyes dead inside. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened in one sentence or less.” Hopefully that will keep the insane mumbling to a minimum.

“Papyrus is dead.” The small skeleton looked down, finally unclenching his hands to reveal the ripped, dusty red scarf in his lap. He started laughing. “What does it matter anymore, Undyne? I’ve been through this so many times. It always ends the same. I have to break my promise to the nice old lady at the door because she stopped knocking. Papyrus dies. You die. Then Mettaton and Alphys and everyone, every single monster, until they get to me. Why can’t I die first, just once. That little bitch of a time anomaly just wants to torture me, save me for last, just because I remember. I’ve tried to step in and stop them but I’m always just a little too late and it never ends.” He was giggling maniacally at this point, and Undyne was at a loss. “So, Undyne. If you knew what I knew, would you keep trying? Because I can’t”

“Umm, if what you’re saying is true and this isn’t some sick prank, I’m going to go to waterfall and die in the name of monsterkind. And then they’ll make it to the Hotlands and murder everyone there like they did here. And then they’ll kill you and go on to King Asgore, right?” sans nodded, looking up at her. “Well, I guess there’s no way to avoid it? I have to try, don’t I? Again, if this is some sick prank I’m kicking your ass. But from what I’ve seen of Snowdin it’s pretty accurate, and if you’ve really been seeing this for as long as it seems, you deserve a break. I’m gonna take you to Alphys, alright? You and her are gonna evacuate and hide away and watch anime in some little hovel until you feel better alright? You don’t have to fight, but Papyrus told me once that you were one hell of an opponent. So give it your all, and if it really ends how you say it will, fuck it, okay? And one day, when all of this ends, you’ve got to spar with me. Just once. With Papyrus there to stop me from killing you, mister-1-hp.”  
Sans really didn’t look much better than when she first came in, but he wasn’t giggling anymore, so Undyne figured that was better than nothing. “Alphys has a knack for calming people down, even though she really doesn’t realize it. You’ll be functional in no time. Now I’m not gonna say this won’t hurt for a while, I mean, it is-was Papyrus. But he wouldn’t like seeing you like this. All hopeless and shit. That nerd would have given his head to see you happy.” A choked sob came from the skeleton. Undyne wasn’t sure if she said something horrible or wonderful, but that confusion only lasted a moment, because Sans was laughing again. Shit.

“You wanna know how he died? You wanna know Undyne? Because I didn’t want to.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Sans.”

“No it’s not, it’s just going to keep repeating until everything breaks and we all go careening into the void or until the human finally tired of cutting down my brother and stomping on his head and slicing you and me and everyone to bits.”

“And when they get tired we can go back to our normal lives.” Undyne hesitated, before looking down and mumbling "Sorry about the head thing. I didn’t know.”

“You’re fine. Honestly, though I’ve lived this hundreds of times. You’d think I’d be a bit numb by now.”

“Sometimes its good to feel.” She said, feeling a little bit lost as she tried to wrap her head around the whole idea of what Sans was telling her.

“Easy for you to say. You survive a death blow because you feel the hearts of the underground beating as one. I survive because I’m quick to dodge. I have to be, I'm ‘mister one hp’.”

“Wait really? What do you mean death blow?"

“Yeah, you actually come back from dust. The kid strikes you when your defenses are down, and through sheer determination, you come back stronger than before and throw a huge wrench in their plans of mass genocide. It’s pretty cool if you ignore the whole death thing.”

“Yeah.” An empty silence followed, both monsters wordlessly mourning their dear friend. It stretched as long as it needed to, before Undyne interrupted it. “Now, I’ll take you to Alphys’ lab–”

“No need, I know the way. Used to work there.” Sans interrupted her thoughts, standing up and wrapping the scarf around his neck, carefully tucking it under his shirt and hoodie. "This was... New. To say the least. By any chance, do you have any strange memories, thoughts, strange dreams? Something of that sort?" He started talking faster, as well as colder. "You know what? Doesn't really matter. I needed a break in the pattern soon, I was going a bit crazy. Maybe it was the flower. He likes to meddle. You haven't talked to a flower recently, have you?" He looked at her, seeing the confusion in her face, and continued, "Nah, that's crazy talk. Anyways, best of luck against certain death. I'm going to go watch anime until it's time for me to die." And with that, there was a blue flash and a swooshing sound, and he was gone. Undyne took that as her cue to leave, and set off towards waterfall to meet the human, and to see how much of Sans' story rung true. She made sure to close the door on her way out.

 


End file.
